1) It's a stupid idea to suddenly tell people to stop using a gesture that is extremely common just because some assholes decided to also start using it because it's giving them power and saying they can take over any gesture (and they will) to force people to stop doing it. It's giving them power to co-op whatever symbol or gesture they want.
Let's assume for one moment that the people who orchestrated the original 4chan hoax were not far-right activists trying to discredit their political opponents and cover their own politics, but fun anarchic trolls indulging in a bit of carnivalesque fun. That's not true, they absolutely were far-right activists, but let's assume it anyway. Let's assume the whole thing is a big giant joke which happened for no reason. Oh boy, what are those wacky trolls going to do next!
So let's assume every single person who photographed themselves making the okay sign, including all the actual neo-Nazis, were just doing it as a funny joke. They were just putting on an act and pretending.
But what were they pretending to be?
Oh right, they were pretending to be white supremacists. That was the joke, right? These people who
totally aren't white supremacists (except the ones who actually are) are pretending to be white supremacists, so that those silly oversensitive liberals get mad at them and think they're white supremacists. That's how this works, right? That's the joke.
I'll reiterate the important part of that. The "joke" here is to make people think you're a white supremacist.
It sounds to me like these cool wacky fun trolls gave white supremacists the power to coopt that symbol when they set out to make people believe that symbol was a white supremacist handsign. Crying that people think you're racist because you did a hand sign that you deliberately attempted to make people believe was racist isn't really taking that power back. Refusing to distance your pretend white supremacy from the real white supremacists who are not pretending isn't taking that power back.
At this point though, the issue is less that white supremacists coopted an innocent joke, and more that you have to be pretty gullible to believe that this was ever a joke.
Except as we've seen it won't be "Stop using the handsign" it will be "Dear Mr Terminal Blue's manager, your employee Mr Terminal Blue was seen making this White supremacist hand gesture, I am shocked and applauded your store supports the Nazi ideology and me and my 50 friend have no intention to buy from your store again until action is taken. Yours Sincerely AntiFA Karen
"Oh no, I pretended to be a white supremacist on the internet so that people would think I was a white supremacist, and now people think I'm a white supremacist! Who could have seen this happening? Imagine my shock! Surely, I have no choice now save to become a white supremacist, which I totally wasn't already. Alas, for I was not a racist, but so cruelly have I been treated for merely pretending to be a racist that I must become racist for real now. Gas the k***s, race war now!"
Forgive my lack of sympathy, it just seems to me that anyone who flips that easily maybe wasn't being entirely honest about pretending to be a racist.
Hell it may not even be about getting people on the side of Nazi. But just alienating them from the site vehemently yelling about fighting the Nazi by getting people who are not Nazis attacked by them and showing said people that the supposed new age Nazi hunters are incompetent and more likely than not going to harm 10 innocent people at least just in the hopes 1 of them might be a Nazi.
If those people were pretending to be Nazis, I don't really care.
Why would you pretend to be a Nazi?
You literally get Wikipedia lists a 4chan prank as starting the modern free bleeding campaign right. Wikipedia itself. You get that right?
I don't get why it's relevant.
Getting people to believe it and getting them to then go after others for it.
Why would you pretend to be a Nazi if you didn't want people to go after you?
Sounds dumb to me.
Also again it relies on people accepting things as absolutely truth and getting the narrative locked in so suddenly going forward those symobols etc have always been secret signs of White supremacy.
No, it doesn't.
It just requires you not to care about irony which isn't actually irony.
Because the name means so much. It could be any troll using a fake name. Honestly it probably is a channer it seems like their style
I love how you will openly admit that going after a disability activist to get people to attack her online is "4chan's style", but then want me to care if these innocent lovable trollsters get (mis)identified as Nazis, or are outed to their bosses.
Like, the reason I didn't link to the /pol/ post on this is because people are literally talking about white supremacist shit in a thread about a stupid tik-tok meme.
Besides, let's be real. There's only one reason anyone from 4chan is on tik-tok.
You think the people who need to know about this stuff will do that?
Yeah.
But I suspect we have very different ideas on who the people are who need to know this stuff.